426d Machiavelli, Niccolo. (1469-1527) The Works of the Famous Nicolas Machiavel, Citizen and Secretary of Florence. Written originally in Italian, and from thence newly and faithfully translated into English.

London: for John Starkey, Charles Harper and John Amery at the Miter, the Flower-de-Luce, and the Peacock, in Fleetstreet, 1680

$4,500

Folio, 12.75 x 7.75 in. Second edition. [π]3, Aa3, b-d2, B-Z4, Aa-Bb2, Cc-Kk4, Ll-Mm2, Nn-Zz4, Aaa-Yyy4. The title page is dusty. The text itself is lightly browned and foxed. Some light damp staining and worming affects the inner margins of pages 260-300. This copy is bound in full contemporary calfskin with all edges stained red. The spine label is chipped and the top of the front joint is cracked.

“Niccolo di Bernardo Machiavelli [was] a famous Italian statesman, diplomatist, and writer, whose character abounds in enigmas and paradoxes, and from whose name has been derived a synonym of perfidious policy, Machiavellism. He was born at Florence on the third of May, 1469. In 1499 he was appointed secretary of the Ten who managed the diplomatic affairs of the republic. He retained this office about fourteen years, during which he was employed in many foreign missions to France, etc., and acquitted himself with great dexterity. In 1510, for the third time, he was sent to France, and negotiated an alliance with Louis XII. He zealously exerted his talents and influence to maintain the independence of Florence, but without success. In 1512 the Medicis obtained sovereign power in Florence by the aid of the pope and the emperor, and Machiavelli was banished from the city, but forbidden to leave the country. He passed several ensuing years in retirement, and during this period composed a treatise on the Art of War, and his important work entitled The Prince, which has entailed a large portion of conventional infamy on his name. It was written for the private use of Lorenzo de’ Medici, and not designed for publication. ‘Few books,’ says Hallam, ‘have been more misrepresented. His crime, in the eyes of the world, was to have cast away the veil of hypocrisy.’ About 1520 he was recalled into public service by Leo X, and was employed on several missions, the last of which was to the army of the league against Charles V (1526). He died at Florence in June, 1527. His last work was an excellent, luminous, and picturesque history of Florence, the style of which is greatly admired. He was also author of several comedies of some merit, and of valuable Discourses on Livy. ‘The Character of Machiavelli,’ says Macaulay, ‘was misrepresented by the learned, misconstrued by the ignorant, censured by the Church, abused with all the rancor of simulated virtue by the minions of a base despotism and the priests of a baser superstition. The name of a man whose genius had illuminated all the dark places of policy, and to whose patriotic wisdom an oppressed people had owed their last chance of emancipation, passed into a proverb of infamy. The terms in which he is commonly described would seem to import that he was the tempter, the evil principle, the discoverer of ambition and revenge, the original invention of perjury.’ ‘His History of Florence,’ says Hallam, ‘is enough to immortalize the name of Machiavelli. Seldom has a more giant stride been made in any department of literature than by this judicious, clear, and elegant history.’ (Introduction to the Literature of Europe).” (Thomas)

Wing M-129; Term Catalogue I 453